Sunday 21 May 2000 08.13 EDT
First published on Sunday 21 May 2000 08.13 EDT

The family of Vladimir Nabokov, author of Lolita, poured scorn this weekend on a claim that an intense relationship with his homosexual brother was the key to his dark and lurid work.

They were responding for the first time to new evidence about the origins of Nabokov's notorious homophobia. Speculation about the Russian emigré brothers, Vladimir and Sergei, has intensified among American scholars this month in the wake of Stacy Schiff's acclaimed biography of Vladimir's wife, Vera, which five weeks ago won a Pulitzer Prize.

Homosexuality was not a guilty secret in the family, the brothers' cousin, Marina Ledkovsky, 76, stressed. Speaking exclusively to The Observer, she said: 'Sergei was a talented, noble and kind man in his own right and something of a war hero.'

Ledkovsky, who knew both men well - Sergei was best man at her wedding - does not believe the brothers had an unusually damaging effect on each other.

An article published in internet magazine Salon.com last week suggests that the two Nabokovs, who were very close in age, operated a kind of dual identity. It also emphasises the influence that two elder gay relatives may have had on the brothers. The author, Lev Grossman, argues that Vladimir's well-chronicled hatred of homosexuality and his obsession with questions of identity stemmed from his fear that his own personality was not distinct enough from his brother's.

They lived oddly parallel lives - both studying the same subject at Cambridge and taking a first job in a bank - until Vladimir married. In their late twenties, Vladimir threw himself into marriage and work, while Sergei became a playboy, mixing with the stars of the Parisian avant-garde - Jean Cocteau, Diaghilev and the writers Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein.

The short story The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, which deals with the shifting sense of self and of right and wrong, is actually about Sergei, according to Grossman. The constant return to the idea of a double existence and the importance of mirrors in all Nabokov's work is part of the same pathology, the argument goes.

'This may be the case,' admits Ledkovsky, now a retired professor living in America. 'But it was not something that I felt when I read The Real Life of Sebastian Knight . My uncles were alike in their wonderful voices and in the way they read poetry. It is wrong of Grossman to imply that they were the opposite of each other in every way.'

The great novelist's son, Dmitri, feels the same way, she said. He wants the lives of the two brothers to be allowed to stand separately.

Nabokov, best known for his fictional portrayal of the paedophile love of the middle-aged Humbert Humbert for the 12-year-old schoolgirl Lolita, often wrote with public disgust about homosexuality. In private he also wrote of his disdain for his brother's sexual persuasion or 'certain oddities of behaviour'. Ledkovsky said her family knew Sergei was homosexual yet adopted a surprisingly tolerant attitude for the time.

'I asked my father if Sergei was homosexual and he told me I was right, but said the important thing was that he was a good man.'

Ledkovsky does give credence, though, to another of Grossman's theories.

While most of the Nabokov family escaped from Germany, Sergei is known to have died at the hands of the Nazis in 1945. He was first arrested for being homosexual and then, after being released from prison, spent his time denouncing the Nazi regime.

'Within the family we were told that he was finally arrested because he challenged someone at a party who argued that the German culture was the greatest in world history,' said Ledkovsky.

Grossman's article suggests an even more dramatic and heroic end to Sergei's life. Princess Zinaida Shachovskaya, a relative of the Nabokovs by marriage, believes he was caught trying to help a British airman, who was a former Cambridge friend, escape from Germany after he had been shot down.

'This is quite possible,' said Ledkovsky. 'He was a brave man with many English friends and it is the sort of thing he would do. The Princess is still alive in a Paris nursing home and she may well know the truth of this matter.'